If history is any guide, Liverpool’s recent friendly with Salzburg will have seen them face a team stocked with Premier League stars of the future. Their line up may even have contained players who will join the Reds further down the line
Three years ago, Liverpool hosted Salzburg in the Champions League. Current Leeds United manager Jesse Marsch was in charge of the visitors, and his starting XI included Patson Daka (now of Leicester), Hwang Hee-chan (Wolves) and Enock Mwepu (Brighton).
He also fielded Takumi Minamino, whose impressive performance no doubt contributed to him joining the Reds a few months later. But the jewel in Salzburg’s crown was Erling Haaland, whom Liverpool can expect to face with Manchester City in the Community Shield tomorrow.
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Recent history is on the Reds’ side. Six of the last seven times the match has been played between the league champions and the FA Cup winners, the latter have prevailed. But as the Community Shield victors have only won the league once since 2010/11, the omen-conscious members of the Liverpool fanbase won’t mind if City triumph.
It matters little if the Reds win or lose. They were beaten by City on penalties in the 2019 showpiece but dominated the second half of the match and won the league in emphatic style in the campaign which followed.
This edition feels a touch more important though, as both sides have invested heavily in new forwards and narratives will be written based on the outcome of the match. Haaland scoring on Saturday won’t prove he will automatically fire City to the title, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt if Liverpool’s centre-backs can keep him quiet.
Jurgen Klopp’s quartet of senior options have varying experience with the former Borussia Dortmund forward. In the Salzburg match at Anfield, Liverpool fielded Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez at the heart of their defence. While Haaland scored, it was with his only shot of a 35-minute cameo appearance.
For the return fixture in Austria, which the Reds needed to win to assure their progress to the knockout phase, Klopp opted to partner Dejan Lovren with Van Dijk. However, the former had to be replaced through injury after 53 minutes, so Gomez came on to help the Reds keep Haaland relatively quiet and see out a 2-0 win.
Gomez hasn’t faced Haaland in any other match, and Joel Matip has no experience of playing against the Norwegian whatsoever. Ibrahima Konate has only had 15 minutes against him, back in 2020 for former club RB Leipzig. Haaland scored with the last kick of the game to seal a 2-0 win, so Liverpool’s number five won’t have fond memories of the match.
It means that Van Dijk has amassed the most Haaland time. As well as playing for the entirety of his two Salzburg appearances against the Reds, Virgil also captained Netherlands in a World Cup qualifier against Norway. Unfortunately for van Dijk, Haaland opened the scoring in a 1-1 draw, despite the Liverpool defender’s best efforts to cover from his side when the City new boy struck from the right of the box.
Haaland scored his first goal in a City shirt in their recent friendly victory over Bayern Munich from the kind of move of which we’ll see plenty this season. A cross from the left found him in the six-yard box and he took care of the rest from there. He was lethal in this area for Dortmund, converting a remarkable 15 of his 20 shots in the Bundesliga.
Liverpool conceded six goals from within their six-yard box in the 2021/22 Premier League, all away from home: three at Brentford, with one each against West Ham, City and Aston Villa. It’s interesting to see that the central defensive partnership of Matip and Van Dijk started all four matches.
Klopp won’t have his plans for a glorified friendly dictated to by the strengths of a single opposition player, no matter how good he is. It is far likelier he will select a team very similar to that which he expects to play at Fulham in the league opener seven days later. The Liverpool manager may consider selecting Konate with Van Dijk to counteract Haaland’s close-range strength though.
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